« Nat Soc Film Crix Votes | Main | Children Of Men Goes Viral (Heh Heh) »
January 07, 2007
Weekend Estimates by Klady
Last year at this time, Hostel opened to $19.6 million and the first four holdovers were off 39.1%, 49%, 27.9% (adding screens), and 41.8%. So this year’s first post-holiday weekend is looking similar and a little better.
The year before it was $24.1 million from White Noise and drops of 31.7%, 34.1%, 49%, 43.5%.
In both cases, the family movies took the bigger hit. And this year too, Charlotte’s Web took the “no more movies for a while” hit.
Night At The Museum will continue chugging along into the low 200s, but it will be the lowest high number for the holiday season since 1999. The season made up for it with quantity. But as we anticipate a record-crushing May, 2006 went out with a whimper.
Pursuit of Happyness, on the other hand, will be the most undervalued hit of 2006, looking like it could end up passing Casino Royale to be Sony’s second highest grossing film of the year in Sony’s best domestic year ever. It will also be the most inexpensively made movie in 2006’s overall Top Ten by no less than half of the next cheapest release.
Speaking to Len Klady’s reportage of people talking about money left on the Dreamgirls table… he is, obviously, right. The movie opened very well and more screens would have meant more money. That’s a given. The studio knew that – duh! – going in with the strategy. However, like Borat, the question is not whether money was left on the table on a given week, but rather, how the strategy lays out over the entire run.
The strategy is not new. It’s been tweaked a bit for the shortened Oscar season. But A Beautiful Mind stayed on 525 screens over the holidays, did terrific business, expanded in early January and then again off the Oscar noms, and had $1 million-plus weeks for 15 straight weeks after that, grossing $145 million in those weeks.
A year later (2002), Chicago did it a little differently, expanding slowly over six weeks, taking in $50 million before going wide the weekend after the Oscar nominations and, again, 13 weeks of $1 million-plus weekends and an additional $113 million in those weeks.
In 2004, Million Dollar Baby went quite a different route, staying on fewer than 200 screens until Oscar nominations and then leaping to a wide release on 2010 screens. They got 10 $1 million weekends out of that, the first film to use the strategy in the shortened season and in that period did $85 million of its $100 million gross.
There was no big box office Oscar movie last year. The high grosser was Brokeback Mountain with $83 million domestic. In every case of the five nominees, the majority of the box office came before the Oscar nominations.
So that brings us to Dreamgirls. The film will be closing in on $60 million when it expands next weekend. Oscar nominations will bring a further expansion. And we really don’t know how things will go. $100 million seems inevitable. And if the film cracks $140 million, I don’t see how anyone can question the strategy. Personally, I think that this down post-holiday week – which was expected by Paramount – allows the gremlins to start wheezing.
And who knows? They could turn to be right. But shouldn’t others in the industry be looking at the success to date with pleasure instead of finger wagging? Same with Children of Men, for that matter. No studio tries new ideas in distribution looking to fail. And the riches often seem to go to the daring. I would argue that a wider release for Dreamgirls would give the film no room to grow with the awards season. Surely, there was more money available last month. But I think any argument that money was left on the table would have to assume a total gross of no more than $110 million. And I think Jim Tharp is looking for more than that.
In the meanwhile, I continue to believe that Fox made the right call on Borat when it made the 850 screen call. What I also feel is that the picture should have been released earlier and that the Thanksgiving wall for that film cost them tens of millions. But hey… no way to prove it, right?
Meanwhile, the other awards hopefuls in limited release are just treading water… especially The Queen, which doesn’t want anyone talking about their numbers, except in the sentence, “More than Capote and soon more than Good Night, And Good Luck.” (P.S. Love the NYT story on Harvey: Oscar Genius that never even tips its hat to Lundberg/Swartz et al.)
3-Day Estimates | Weekend | % Change | Cume
Night at the Museum | 24.1 | -34% | 164.2
Pursuit of Happyness | 13.2 | -32% | 124.3
Children of Men | 10.3 | new | 11.9
Freedom Writers | 9.8 | new | 9.8
Dreamgirls | 8.8 | -37% | 54.5
Happily N'Ever After | 6.7 | new | 6.7
Charlotte's Web | 6.6 | -44% | 66.9
The Good Shepherd | 6.6 | -40% | 48.5
Rocky Balboa | 6.3 | -41% | 60.9
We Are Marshall | 5.2 | -36% | 35.5
ALSO...
Curse of the Golden Flower | .36 (5,480) | -19% | 66 | 2.2
Little Children | .35 (3,240) | 123% | 103 | 3
Miss Potter | .12 (4,540) | 1080% | 26 | 0.14
The Good German | 81,000 (4,050) | -30% | 20 | 0.63
Letter from Iwo Jima | 78,000 (15,600) | -11% | 5 | 0.47
Notes on a Scandal | 1.1 (11,830) | 163% | 93 | 2
The Queen | 1.0 (3,190) | 10% | 323 | 29.9
Pan's Labyrinth | .72 (16,360) | 27% | 44 | 1.8
Volver | .61 (4,840) | -2% | 126 | 6.5
Perfume | .59 (2,110) | | 280 | 0.7
The Painted Veil | .51 (7,080) | 40% | 72 | 1.3
Posted by poland at January 7, 2007 11:07 AM
Comments
Kudos to both Children of Men and Freedom Writers.
Children of Men, despite a real marquee name had a great word of mouth opening, and Freedom Writers just goes to show you the teen skewed early year trend continues.
Hillary Swank anchoring a film to almost a 10 million dollar opening... that was a bit of a surprise.
Posted by: anghus ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 7, 2007 11:44 AM
Yeah, Swank's career thus far has alternated between home runs and strikeouts. It's good to see her hit a solid single. (End of baseball metaphor.)
Posted by: Rob at January 7, 2007 12:00 PM
Someone was asleep at the wheel with "Perfume." It's a bit of a tough sell, sure, but it's tremendously entertaining and seems like it would have a lot of arthouse appeal, at least. $2K PSA on 280 screens? What happened?
Posted by: eugenen at January 7, 2007 12:19 PM
Perhaps theater selection was a problem for Perfume. Its one screen here in Milwaukee is definitely not the first choice of the likely audience for the movie.
Posted by: Eric at January 7, 2007 12:27 PM
For all the people whining about how Universal handled Children of Men, The F-ed Up Release Of The Year was Perfume.
Strong book, strong appeal to women, an absolute mess of a release.
The film needed tender care and instead got ramrodded in with Dreamgirls and Charlotte's Web. Maybe they had a 2006 obligation to release, but they should have held for March and grossed no less than $30 million on publicity efforts and $15 million in P&A alone.
Posted by: David Poland at January 7, 2007 12:41 PM
Whoa, what makes you think a movie about an illiterate serial killer of women where the biggest star is Dustin Hoffman has 'strong appeal to women'?
I love the movie but...?
Posted by: jeffmcm at January 7, 2007 01:11 PM
Look at Rocky motoring on to $60 Mill...is 70 or 75 out of reach? Good to see it performing well.
I saw Curse of the Golden Flower, and Children of Men this weekend. Liked both, although Children of Men is growing on me more and more. Maybe it will sneak in some surprise nominations. Too bad Clive Owen wasn't touted as Best Actor earlier on. His is one of the best performances of the year. Hopefully more people see it in the coming weeks.
Posted by: Aladdin Sane at January 7, 2007 01:38 PM
Apparently the Children of Men fans are trying to persuade academy voters to at least see the pic:
http://www.digg.com/movies/Why_Children_of_Men_is_the_Best_Picture_of_the_Year
Kinda sad when the fans have to market the film instead of the company that's releasing it, no?
Posted by: Zac Bertschy at January 7, 2007 01:45 PM
Did anyone notice that DG had $10,000 per screen? Huh? It's leading the pack right now and I keep running into people who saw it and more who are going back a 2nd and 3rd time to see it (moi).
Posted by: Chicago48 at January 7, 2007 02:12 PM
True, but it also had a significant dropoff from last weekend, bigger than the top 2 movies. Everything points to a slowdown around 85-90 then pick up another 30 post-nominations. Not as big as Chicago, but very big nonetheless.
Posted by: martin at January 7, 2007 02:46 PM
Both Blood Diamond (which is doing well after just an $8 mil dollar start) and The Good Shepherd would be considered solid performers if they didn't cost so damn much to make!
Posted by: martindale at January 7, 2007 03:13 PM
I saw Dreamgirls a second time last night...even better than the first! I even caught some nuance in Beyonce's perfomance this time around. Jennifer Hudson is amazing. It's not just the singing, it's her whole presence. She's the electric spark of the whole film.
Posted by: iowabeef at January 7, 2007 04:02 PM
It's funny... I really enjoyed Dreamgirls but it has faded fast in my memory. And after seeing Children of Men, I don't think it's even in the same league.
Posted by: Melquiades at January 7, 2007 04:36 PM
Notice the legs of Pursuit of Happyness - wow! that's a movie that should have fallen off the planet by now...but it keeps on ticking...good word of mouth?
Posted by: Chicago48 at January 7, 2007 07:55 PM
Notice the legs of Pursuit of Happyness - wow! that's a movie that should have fallen off the planet by now...but it keeps on ticking...good word of mouth?
To Melquiades - I have the DG soundtrack, so it doesn't fade from my memory....I just use my imagination to revisit it. (lol)
Posted by: Chicago48 at January 7, 2007 07:56 PM
Saw Children of Men and Dreamgirls on the same night. The directing made one, and the editing made another. You just can't get any more different in tone than those two.
Posted by: Tofu at January 7, 2007 10:24 PM
I always knew Pursuit would make a lot of cash. That's why I thought it'd be a BP contender until the reviews came it. It seemed to fit the Kramer vs Kramer sort of slot they used to adore.
Looks like that $40mil mark I guessed for Children of Men was right.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at January 7, 2007 11:01 PM
Pursuit has definitely over-performed. Esp. considering reasonably strong adult competition from Rocky to Good Shepherd, to Dreamgirls to Marshall. As well as lack of Awards talk. So people are just going to it because of a strong Will Smith appeal, story, and word of mouth.
Posted by: martin at January 8, 2007 08:59 AM
Well, apart from DREAMGIRLS, none of the other titles you cite have strong appeal to women, which PURSUIT has to spare.
Posted by: Cadavra at January 8, 2007 05:10 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)